Make Yourself Some Goddamn Wings
by AlexTuesday
Summary: Once upon a time somebody - and he didn't know who and he didn't really care - told him that people used to give sacrifices to their gods. Batman/Joker - Batjokes - SLASH - dark/religious!AU


**AUTHOR'S NOTE; **Shit, this was suppose to be a quick 500 word prompt for ladyvandaele on Tumblr and then it sort of... exploded. The original prompt was "joker comparing his love for batman to a religion. like all sick, creepy and twisted like… ^/^".

To quote my original author note; _"Okay, at this point, I've been awake for 20 hours on crappy sleep and I honestly have no sweet clue what I'm writing but it certainly started with this prompt. This did not turn out as creepy as I intended, but I've been vaguely twisting prompts for hours now."_

* * *

On the days when he's one badly worded confession or therapy session away from being upgraded from hospital to prison, he brings out the word vomit that is his love for the bat.

Because nothing says love, like wondering what your god's flesh would taste like.

(But they don't always see it that way.)

…

The further back he thinks, the harder it gets. Memory is a highway, speeding past and all the trees on the sidelines melt into a blur. If you ask him to think back - way back, acid trip except not the _fun kind_ back, he can barely make it out.

But there is something back there, the only reason he doesn't give up at all, and every single reason he ever needs _not to remember_.

It's big and it's got fangs and boy oh boy, did his mother - _he assumes_ - tell him about this little critter under his bed. _Don't let it bite you_. Croaks the woman who might be a housewife, a little girl, a cross-dressing thirty-something male smoker or the nurse that jabs him full of whatever three times a day. _Give it a taste, and it'll turn you into it_.

Except that's not right.

It's not _his blood_ that's needed.

…

_The bat_ is a flicker at the edge of his head, the corner of his eye. In his dreams, he swims in a yellow fluid that turns and slows and squeezes his lungs so he can't breathe, except he really _can_ and that doesn't make much sense.

When he gets close to the surface, the bat paws downwards, reaches him and hooks steel claws into his back to yank him out, and when he resurfaces, he can see glowing eyes and snapping teeth only a small distance from his noise.

This happens again and again and again. Every night for a long time, the bat pulls him back out and every time, the wounds from the last dream do not heal.

One night the bat goes even farther. The creature lays him down on a factory-mansion-supermarket floor and lays each strip of flesh shredded from his back outwards. Each careful swipe, every night, had loosened them enough for this.

The bat sweeps its black, furred wings that stretch from galaxy to universe across the room/field/cage and regards its work.

**Your wings are too weak**. Snarls the beast. **You haven't got the bone**.

His flesh has formed feathers, brilliant, white feathers speckled through with crimson. They're beautiful, but utterly useless without the muscle - or the bone.

"I haven't got bone to spare." The clown says sadly, wondering if he could sacrifice a couple of fingers or a leg or _something_.

**You don't.** Says the bat. **But others do.**

_Now there's an idea._

…

Once upon a time somebody - and he didn't know who and he didn't really care - told him that people used to give sacrifices to their gods. Animals, mostly, but items of value and food in general were a big one. Women, if your gods were into that sort of thing. Blood and bone, flesh and things like that. Gods already owned your soul, couldn't hurt to give them the rest of the meaty bits.

The bat in the real world - the one where things _hurt_ and so on - is trapped inside his own little vessel. He gets so _upset_ at the offerings Joker leaves him. The dead ones, all prepared for sacrifice if only he knew where the alter was.

"You can't do this." The bat tells him. "This is _wrong_."

_Oh dear_. Thinks the Joker, and moves onto a different type.

Still, the bat is not pleased.

"I do this for you." He tries to explain, because this was the bat's _request_, but still, the bat scowls. "Stop it." The beast hisses.

_But you won't give me my wings otherwise_. The clown wants to shriek, but he doesn't _dare_ speak such thoughts aloud, nor think them when the bat's inside his head. Such things - they are blasphemy. He doesn't dare.

…

Plan B - release the god, destroy the vessel. He even did research. Badly done research, but he learned things through books and he considers that an achievement.

Plenty of people, he learned, released gods from their vessels, by sacrificing the bodies.

He lays down to sleep this night and _prays-_

…

The bat is curled on a bed of bones, rotted flesh and pools and pools of blood. Joker has to wade through it just to get close, and it laps at his ankles, singing terrible things about his deity.

The bat crunches bone between fangs.

**You're still too** **weak**.Comes the rumbling voice, thick with the war cries of armies past. **We must make your body stronger.**

"Sure." He agrees without thinking. The not-wings are limp against his back, trailing fleshy feathers on the surface of the pools. He doesn't remember them being that _big_ or that _long_. "How do I do that?"

The bat turns its massive head, tilts it a bit. **Figure it out.**

…

The bat's vessel is _stubborn._ He hisses and pulls and pushes. Joker keeps pushing and pushing, giving and giving and it doesn't _work_.

Then he hits the jackpot.

"You've been drinking people's blood." The bat's voice cracks. "_Why?_"

Joker rolls one shoulder in a shrug - the gleeful manner he uses to entertain the citizens slips so easily here.

The bat pauses. Thinks, perhaps consults the spirit spiralling around its fleshy bits. "You're not taking much. Not even a cup."

"No. That's probably about right."

"Take mine instead."

And to this, the clown blinks, once, twice. Could it be that easy? Could his god be merciful?

"Sound good to me." _Thank you._

…

Partake of a god's being - flesh or otherwise, and what do you become? High-priest, angel, demigod?

Joker doesn't know.

He does it anyway.

…

The bat freezes the blood at first, but Joker doesn't always have a freezer, so sometimes' its fresh and sometimes he's right there when the bat draws it out.

It is the taste of immortal power, a piece of godly symbolism.

The bat's vessel doesn't seem to mind. In fact, the first time the needle doesn't go in right, and blood drips down the bat's forearm, Joker's lapping it directly off _hot-cold-godly_ skin before either of them can think, rasping over sweat and scars alike.

When he looks up, the bat's eyes are feverish hot.

"Divine." Joker whispers and leaves with his nectar.

In his dreams, the bat licks its lips with a forked tongue.

…

He tries to kill the bat's vessel seventeen times - eleven of which by fire, since that's what the books said. All it gains him is a really pissed off vessel.

"Stop it." Comes with the rumbling growl, so close to the thundering one in his dreams. The bat's buried himself up against Joker, pinning him to the wall. Hands slide along the clown's skin, a rough tongue rasps against dull nerves.

"I'm trying to set you free." He mumbles, and the bat bites down on his neck hard enough that he screams.

He doesn't try to kill the vessel after that.

…

**We are hungry.** The god is seated upon what remains of the Joker's body. Its iron claws are in his chest, snacking on his internal organs. The clown's finding it hard to argue otherwise.

"I'm trying." He stresses. "Maybe you need a bigger church. More worshippers. We can get you more food."

The beast growls. **We are not hungry for food.**

_Oh._

…

So Joker tries hostages and they don't really go over well. Every time, the bat shows up, lets them go, and turns to him. The bat never takes _any_ of them, and how do you starve off hungry if there are no snacks?

But there is a positive upside. The bat turns to him and _takes_, so delightfully and so surely.

"You're doing better." Came the whispers upon his naked skin. "So much better, this is closer to what I want."

_Thank you_. Thinks the Joker, and it's half gratitude, half prayer. It's half happiness too - he's pleasing his god and he's _happy_.

…

"Your obsession with the Batman is rather unhealthy, Patient J. Why do you think that is?"

"Circumstance."

"Come again?"

"He's not your average god. Haven't got a church to preach him. Makes me look crazier."

"The Batman is not a god."

"_Do not blasphemes!_"

…

There are moments of clarity.

"I'm sorry." He says, miserable, a couple of times. "It makes sense in my head."

Beneath the god's helmet, the vessel has a handsome face. Except maybe it's not a vessel, not a god, maybe it's just a _man_.

"Stop _thinking_." Scolds- scolds- he doesn't know what scolds him, but it lets him bury his head into its chest and hold on for the entire night.

This _man_ is generous.

His god more so.

…

The Joker kills one of the bat's pathetic little flock. The little bird screams as he bleeds, burns, dies.

The bat finds him after, and the part of him not consumed tells him the bat is going to _kill him_.

The bat leans over, and there is _nothing _but vessel-person, _man_with pumping blood and proper parents and other such things. There are no fangs, no red eyes, no fur, no wings. Just regular armour, a fabric cape and a cowl designed in a lab. This is a man. It always has been.

The bat leans over.

"These bones will be a good start for your wings." Comes the deep rumble, the same rumble that's been shouted, scowled, whispered at Joker a hundred times over.

It is human. It is during the day. He's awake.

The bat stares directly into his eyes.

Bares dull, human teeth.

And his back feels like it's on _fire._

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE;** I seriously have no fucking idea, but I'm going to rewrite this, make it longer and more detailed later.


End file.
